


Nightbird

by cerie



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: AU, CIA, Espionage, F/M, Spy - Freeform, caribbean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:32:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3734080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s wanted this since she first called him on that warm September night, before he ever knew what her name was or who she worked for or the way her freckles dust the bridge of her nose. Before he knew her laugh or her smile or her warm brown eyes, he wanted this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightbird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie/gifts).



> AU where MacKenzie is the government leak.

“Is this Will McAvoy?” 

Will has two phones. He has his Blackberry for all his official ACN bullshit and it’s the number on his business cards and the one he gives to women he never intends to call back. But he has a private, personal line that’s unlisted and when his iPhone starts ringing with a restricted number, it’s mostly curiosity that makes him pick it up. 

It’s September in the city and there’s still heat rising off the asphalt at midnight and he’s three blunts in because Charlie’s taken him off 9/11 because he was an idiot who thought calling the Tea Party out on their bullshit was a good idea. He still thinks it’s a good idea, deep down, but he’s more than a little sore about being taken off all the anniversary coverage and having to turn his show over to Sloan and Elliot for the night. 

He’s high enough to be curious and that’s why he picked up the phone. The voice on the other end is girlish and soft, rounded vowels and non-rhotic and English. She’s definitely English. Will has taken his fair share of dialect classes since being on camera (and is luckily blessed to be Midwestern and have little to no accent to get rid of) and he knows English when he hears it. He likes it. His pot-addled brain _really_ likes it. 

“Mmmhmm, who’s asking? How’d you get this number, little lady?” He hears a huff on the other end of the line and he wonders if she’s going to disconnect. He hopes not. Her number didn’t show up on his caller ID and he doesn’t know if you can *69 a restricted number and he really, really wants to keep talking to her. Besides, she called him. Clearly she wants something. 

“Getting your personal number is hardly a challenge, Mr. McAvoy. I’ve business to discuss. Would you like a story? I’ve got one for you.” This makes him perk up. He’s not exactly in good graces with the network right now and if he’s getting a tip, he thinks he ought to make the most of it. If it’s a good story, a meaty story, it might get him out of the hot seat and get the Lansings and Charlie off his back. 

His viewers might not look at him as the enemy anymore. 

“I always want a story. What are you offering? And what’s your name?” The voice huffs again and he thinks that if he could see her face on the other end of the line, she’d be pouting. Is it weird to be this into a voice? Will thinks so but, again, high, so he’s going to discount it for now and listen to what she has to say. 

“My name’s not important. Call me Nightbird, or whatever, it’s the story that’s important. My credentials are good and this story is solid.” Will cuts her off. He’s not exactly looking to get burned again and he’s not going to trust a little English girl pranking him on the other side of a restricted phone number. 

“Deep Throat gave his name, you know. Fine, Nightbird, how do I know you aren’t just putting me on? How can you prove to me that you’re NSA or CIA or whatever the hell you’re claiming to be?” 

The voice on the other end of the line sighs softly. “Do you honestly think I’m going to give you information about our current military operations and put lives in jeopardy? My story is about something that has already happened, two years ago. It’s not current. I’m not divulging current state secrets and getting us both killed.” The way she says military it sounds clipped and proper and he wonders how an English woman got around to working for the US government. 

“Are you an American citizen, Nightbird?” An affirmative comes over the line and Will rubs the bridge of his nose. What he’s doing is basically treason, more or less, and he’s hoping that because he’s a journalist and she’s dumping this on him that he’ll get off with journalistic immunity. He doesn’t have to divulge his source and if he doesn’t know who she is, he isn’t lying to protect her. She can be truly anonymous. 

Except he can’t run a story vetted with ‘anonymous DOD source’ can he? No. 

“I need a name. I’m not going to print your name but I have to make sure you’re a real person,” he says, pressing a little more. He hears her breathing for a few moments, quick and shallow little breaths and then the line goes silent. 

Well then.

***

On 9/11, he’s in a bar across from ACN. It’s dead because the usual crowd is all at work doing the 9/11 Anniversary broadcast and he’s drinking scotch alone at the end of the bar. His usual bartender comes over to chat with him and one of the things he likes about her is that she’s discreet.

“So, Will, a woman brought something in for you earlier. Normally I throw that shit away without even giving it to you but she seemed...well, she wasn’t your usual fangirl type. She looked professional. I thought maybe she was a courier for ACN or something so I took her envelope and put it behind the bar. Do you want it?” 

Will nods and the envelope is thick, sealed tight and taped down. It has his name written across the front in messy scrawl and he tucks it under his arm. “I think I want my tab. Can you get it for me?” The bartender nods and runs the tab, bringing him his receipt. He drops a wad of cash on the bar and takes the envelope with him. He’s not opening this anywhere but home because this shit is the kind of shit that gets people sentences in Leavenworth. 

When he gets back to his apartment, he takes the envelope to his bedroom and opens it on his bed. His phone and computer are in the other room; he’s not taking chances with it. He’s not going to risk his life or the life of the woman who got this to him. 

Everyone knows about the American embassy attack in Equatorial Kundu. They had run a series of stories on it back two years ago and it was very tragic, very shocking, few survivors. Except the documents he’s looking at show that the story they had, the story the press had, was entirely wrong. 

Document after document show that it was staged. Oh, sure, everyone died that was supposed to die but it was the US military who ordered the attack, not a group of radicals in an unstable country. The memos all dance around the idea of casualties but it all reeks of ‘the needs of the many outweigh the few.’ Kundu has oil and strategic resources that could be used to stage other conflicts in the region and if the US had a reason to withdraw diplomatic representation and invade a sovereign country - they’d have access to all of it. Which is precisely what’s happened, given Kundu’s been occupied by the US since 2009. 

“Fuck,” Will says lowly. There’s glossy photos of body after body and while he doesn’t want to look at it, he has to. It feels real. All the documents are stamped and signed by the appropriate players and it goes high up, way up. They’re also all CIA. On the last page, there’s a monogram: MMM. Judging from the other pages and the appearance of the initials throughout the documents, he imagines they’re who prepared them. He thinks MMM must be his source. There’s a phone in the packet and there’s one number programmed into it. He dials it. 

“This is Nightbird, I guess?” The voice on the other end of the line is sleepy and soft and Will wonders what time zone she’s on. It’s not that late on the East Coast. 

“This is,” she says in reply. “I trust you got my package? I’ve more, but I don’t dare give it to you in physical documents. There’s an SD card in the phone I provided you. Discard the phone and keep the card. It has my email. Do not dare try to contact me on your regular line. Do not save this number. I’m discarding the phone tonight.” 

This is deep shit and Will would laugh at all the subterfuge except it’s necessary. In giving him this information, she’s committed espionage, and he’s probably committed it by accepting them. He isn’t exactly up and up on constitutional law but he thinks he’s good here. He’s a journalist. He doesn’t have to divulge his source. He can protect her with that, at least long enough for her to clear the country. 

“You know you’ve got to clear out, right? Do you have a plan for that?” She laughs softly and Will thinks he hears a hint of fear beneath it. He’s hard-wired to want to fight and protect and defend against women being afraid and while he can shield this woman with his journalistic integrity he can’t shield her with his body. He can’t protect her if the government comes to take her in the middle of the night and interrogate her at some goddamn black site or whatever spook shit the CIA does on a regular basis. 

“Las Roques,” she murmurs. “Venezuela isn’t going to extradite me. I’ve enough money to hide there permanently, if need be. Parents were wealthy.” He knows nothing about her but he’s relieved to know she has a plan. She’s going to get out and he’s going to air this story and probably go to jail for it but at least she’s going to be safe. He doesn’t have to have a woman’s blood on his hands, even if said woman was holding the knife. 

“You’re taking a big risk, you know.” He doesn’t hear anything on the other end of the line and he checks the phone to be sure the call didn’t drop. He hears her soft breathing and after an inhale and a sharp exhale, she speaks again. 

“I know. It’s time you knew my name, isn’t it? So you can vet me?” Will nods and realizes she can’t see it. He’s more than a little infatuated with her voice and he wants a name to go with it, wonders if he googles her if he can see her picture and put a face with a name and a voice. She’s Nightbird, yes, but he wants to know everything about her. He wants to know everything that makes up a woman brave enough to risk her life to tell the truth. 

“MacKenzie McHale,” she says, and the line goes dead. Will decides he’s going to be sure she’s out of the country before he leaks anything and hopes that MacKenzie will contact him to let him know. He doesn’t want to be responsible for her getting caught.

***

The next few days are uneventful but on Friday, when he comes to work, the FBI are there going through piles and piles of documents and poring through everyone’s computers. Nobody seems to know what the fuck is going on. Will gets a text on his phone of a sign in the airport and he presumes it’s from MacKenzie; the sign says Bienvenidos a Caracas. He gets another text with a link to the Washington Post’s website.

> GEORGETOWN WOMAN FOUND DEAD
> 
> MacKenzie McHale, 38, was found dead in her Georgetown apartment early this morning after a fire that consumed the entire building. Police haven’t ruled out arson at this time and are currently investigating. Ms. McHale is single and survived by three sisters and two brothers.

Will imagines she must have staged the fire and he doesn’t want to think about who the body is. He wants to think MacKenzie didn’t kill anyone; maybe she stole a corpse or something. Maybe it’s burned beyond recognition. He’s a former prosecutor and he can think of half a dozen ways to stage a murder; he wonders if that’s on MacKenzie’s resume too.

One of the FBI agents summons him into an office and asks him who the source is. He knows. He has all the evidence to reveal MacKenzie here and now but he isn’t going to. It’s not the way he operates and he imagines she must have known that, given she came straight to him with the story and didn’t give it to a producer or a low level staffer first. She must know something about him and how he works to trust him and it gives him a weird feeling of intimacy with her. He knows next to nothing about her but what he _does_ know, he wants to fiercely protect. 

“Who’s your source for this? We know there’s been a leak and we need you to reveal the source so we can prosecute the offender.” Will shakes his head. “I’m not speaking without my attorney present. Can I call her? Rebecca Halliday?” The agent gives him a sour look and Will whips out his phone and calls Rebecca. She curses violently before hanging up and Will settles in a chair at the end of a conference table. 

“She’ll be here soon. You boys want any coffee while you’re violating my constitutional rights?” 

The agents scowl some more and Will makes himself comfortable until Rebecca gets there. Unfortunately for him, she’s followed by an attorney from the DOJ who serves Rebecca with a subpoena that, apparently, has Will’s name on it. He hasn’t even aired this shit and it’s already out. He’s glad MacKenzie got the hell of the Dodge but he’s wondering just what’s going to happen to him now. 

“If you don’t tell me the name of your source, I’ll have you tried for espionage in his stead. I know you know who it is. Will doesn’t say anything and puts his hands on the table, palms flat against the glass.

“I have a right to protect my source. I will not tell you who my source is and I will not reveal how I got this information about US activity in Kundu. It’s my right as a journalist to be able to protect my sources and to report the news even when it is adverse to the government. It’s under my first amendment rights, actually, so until and unless you lock me up for espionage, I will not be revealing who gave me this information. Hell, I probably won’t even tell you then. I like to stick to my principles.” 

Rebecca gives him a dark look and the federal prosecutor throws his hands up in disgust. He tells Will to report to the federal courthouse at 9 the next day and leaves, FBI boys in tow. Will’s grateful that he never brought the documents into the office and never accessed anything electronically. He still has MacKenzie’s phone and her SD card and he can turn them over when the time comes to air the story. For now, he’s got them in his safe in his apartment where nobody can find them. 

Hopefully.

***

He hadn’t expected to end the day in lockup. While he’s been jailed for contempt before, those have always been short stints. Will used to get himself a weekend in jail every once in a while for mouthing off to some judge when he was a young prosecutor but this seems more permanent and indefinite. Owing to his celebrity status, they give him a private cell but it’s almost worse that way. It’s worse knowing he has nobody to talk to and nothing to fill the time but books and books and books.

He has plenty of those. He has poetry and novels and non-fiction. He’s sorted them all into piles and reads them one after another, filling his days with dragons and cults and everything in between. It helps to pass the time. He gets a little time outside once a week and while he wants a cigarette with everything in his body, he resists bribing a guard to bring one in for him. If he’s doing time for standing on his principles, he isn’t going to cheat it. He’s going to do his time and when they decide they’ve had enough of toying with a journalist and give up chasing MacKenzie, he’ll go home. 

He’ll take a leave of absence and then he’ll go back to the studio, go back to knocking the bad guys on the chin and telling the news without slanting to the right or left. He likes to think this is what MacKenzie really wanted, someone to tell her story with honesty and integrity and he owes her that much. They’re not airing it until he gets back out of jail (mostly because he threatened Charlie he’d quit if they did) and Will is smug about the fact that ACN seems to be backing him on this. Better yet, based on the magazines he’s been sent, the public seems to like his little turn for the heroic. There’s protestors outside daily demanding that he be freed and the guards bitch about it often enough that he thinks eventually the judge is just going to have to give in. He’s a news anchor, after all, and apparently someone the public trusts more than a faceless judge who locked him up for indefinite contempt. 

At first, he keeps track of the days. He has a calendar in his cell and he dutifully ticks off each day. After about six weeks or so, though, he stops. There’s no point. There’s no date he’s counting down to, no number circled in red that says “HOME TODAY” and he has no idea when he’s getting out of here. Counting just seems to give him false hope. Every once in a while he gets hauled out for questioning and he refuses to speak until Rebecca is there and when she is there, he refuses to divulge the source. She doesn’t even know it, not that she could violate her privilege to tell anyone, but he thinks Rebecca would just to stop having to come down here and deal with his ass. 

He’s sure his legal bills are out the ass at this point. He’s also sure he doesn’t care. 

He thinks about MacKenzie a lot. He wonders if she’s lounging on a beach somewhere in Venezuela, enjoying her new life. He knows she faked her death and he thinks that means he can reveal that she was the source but he doesn’t want to. He promised he would protect her and he’s going to, even if the only thing he can do to protect her is sit in this jail cell and refuse to say anything. 

He promised.

***

Six months after he walked into jail, he gets a call that he’s going home. Turns out, the FBI has determined that MacKenzie was the leak and that she’d died in her house fire. There had been no way to identify the body but there was no way to establish it wasn’t her so they’d given up looking. Will tries not to reveal how that makes him feel. He’s free now and, apparently, MacKenzie is too. She can’t ever come back to the US but he imagines that hadn’t been in her plans anyway and, besides, he guesses tropical paradise is a good enough place for an exile.

He takes a few days off and on his last day before returning to work, he opens the safe in his apartment. The documents and the phone are still there and, on a lark, he turns it on and sends a text message. MacKenzie had said she was dumping her phone and he doesn’t expect a response except one comes back just as quickly as he sent his tentative hello. 

_Still in Las Roques. Come diving with me?_

He’s got a story to air, first, but he books a ticket for Caracas all the same. He books it through Cabo and makes it look like he’s going to do a tour of the Caribbean; he’s got a flight two weeks later to Curacao that he doesn’t intend to take. He intends to spend a month or so down in Venezuela getting to know the woman who turned his life upside down. It’s stupid but the entire time this shit has been going down, he’s been thinking about her. He’s been thinking about that honeyed English voice, how it might sound rough from sleep, how it might sound moaning his name. 

He’s in love with a woman he’s never seen. As tropes go, it’s fucking trite, and he thinks if he told anyone, they’d think he was stoned out of his mind. Maybe he is. Still, he’s fascinated with her and he’s got to meet her, even if nothing comes of it but a thank you and a goodbye. He’s got to put an end to this chapter of his life and he’s got to see her face, at least once, and know what he put his ass on the line to protect. 

When the story airs, the ratings are through the roof. They’re getting calls nonstop from the DOD and the White House and God knows who else but Will doesn’t care. He’s got a flight to catch. He has his bag in his office and barely takes time to change and snag it before catching a cab to LGA. It’s a shitty flight, doing an overnight, but he thinks he can deal with it given the mystery waiting at the end of it. 

He wastes a day in Cabo drinking before getting back on a plane to fly to Caracas and he isn’t surprised when there isn’t anyone there at the airport holding up a sign with his name on it. Figures. She’s not going to be obvious about outing herself to him and he guesses the best thing he can do is go based on the clues she’s given him. Las Roques. Diving. 

He charters a flight out of Caracas to the islands and asks where he can go diving. The pilot gives him directions to a little shack where he can rent equipment and just when Will thinks he’s going to have to meet this woman at the bottom of the ocean, he feels a tap on his shoulder. His breath catches. He doesn’t want to ruin the illusion of it, the fantasy, but the curiosity is too much for him. Who is MacKenzie McHale? What does she look like? He takes a moment to experience her in other ways; she smells faintly of coconut and hibiscus and her hand on his shoulder is light. 

When he turns, he takes a moment to drink her in. She’s tall, with long legs and pale, freckled skin. She has brown hair and brown eyes that crinkle up at the corner when she smiles and God, what a smile. She’s slim, with amazing curves, and her laugh is adorable. It’s better than he could have imagined. She reaches for his hand and tugs him down along the beach. For a while, they simply walk. He walks with her and lets the surf lap against his toes. It’s warm and the sand is sugary and there’s no place else he’d rather be. 

She eventually drags him up a path and Will wonders just what she’s got planned. If she’s going to kill him, it’s a hell of a way to go, but it turns out there’s a little bungalow tucked away among the thick palms and she pulls him up the path to the house. Once they’re inside, she turns that smile on him again and Will thinks it’s like having the sun turned on him full force; he can’t quite look at it directly for fear he’s going to be blinded but he needs it. He needs her to always smile at him like that. 

He’s not sure who starts the kiss. His lips against hers are a blinding, maddening crush and his hands roam all over her warm skin. He backs her up against the wall and buries his face between her breasts, hands roaming up to undo the bikini top and let them fall free. Her breasts are full and heavy and fit perfectly in his hands; he cups them and bites softly at one nipple, soothing it with his tongue. He does the same to the other, teasing her nipples into hard little peaks. MacKenzie cries out softly and he slides down, ignoring the pain of his knees. 

He slides his hands into her bikini bottom and cups her ass for a moment before yanking them down. MacKenzie laughs and parts her thighs, threading her hand in his hair as if she knows what to expect. Will bites her hip lightly and turns her around, parting her thighs a little wider before pulling her ass closer so he can bite it too. There’s a little pink mark there, dark against her pale skin, and he soothes it with a kiss before tipping her hips back a little more so he can drag his tongue against her cunt and along her ass. MacKenzie draws in a sharp breath and Will spreads her thighs a little wider still, sliding two fingers into her and rolling her clit beneath his thumb. 

“Will, goddammit, Will, please,” MacKenzie begs. Her voice is rough with arousal, vowels slurring into one another and consonants tumbling in a pleading little trill. He crooks his fingers a little more before sliding them out and stands, shoving down his pants and boxers in one smooth motion. MacKenzie has her palm flat against the wall and he covers it with his own, marveling at how small her hand is as he guides his cock into her with the other. MacKenzie whimpers under him and he lowers his head, biting her at the juncture of neck and shoulder as he moves within her painfully slow. He’s wanted this since she first called him on that warm September night, before he ever knew what her name was or who she worked for or the way her freckles dust the bridge of her nose. Before he knew her laugh or her smile or her warm brown eyes, he wanted this. 

He feels her tighten around him and he moves his hips faster, groaning against the soft skin of her neck as he comes. He kisses her gently from shoulder to neck to ear, licking a bead of sweat off her soft, soft skin before drawing his hips back and turning her around. He cups her face in his hands and watches her, impressed that she meets his eyes with her own for a long while and that it’s him that looks away first. MacKenzie might look like a delicate English rose but she’s far from demure. 

“You’re going to leave me, aren’t you? To go back to the States?” Will nods. There’s no point in pretending he’s going to stay forever. He can’t. He’s got a life and a career that requires him to live in New York. He also has enough pull and enough pay with said job that jaunts down to the Caribbean aren’t exactly out of the ordinary for him. How is Venezuela any different? 

“Not tonight, though. Not tonight.”


End file.
